Politics 88 : Jackson’s ‘Passion,’ Dukakis’ ‘Competence’ Vie in Wisconsin

When Jesse Jackson came to this blue-collar Milwaukee suburb last week seeking support for his presidential candidacy in today’s Wisconsin primary, about 700 townspeople came to hear him. And when Jackson reminded them that in their “hour of crisis” he had walked the picket line at the strikebound Patrick Cudahy meatpacking plant, their cheers seemed to rattle the rafters of St. Frederick’s Catholic Church.

“I could listen to him all night,” Mary Liska, a 72-year-old widow and longtime worker at the packing plant, said afterward.

The ardor of the St. Frederick’s audience for Jackson underlines what Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is up against as he and Jackson struggle for the upper hand in Wisconsin--a contest which is bound to have profound impact on the rest of the competition for the Democratic nomination.

In a state where blacks account for only about 3% of the voting age population, it is commonly accepted that white working-class and middle-class voters like those who cheered at St. Frederick’s hold the balance of power. Jackson is bidding for their support with soul-stirring rhetoric. For his part, Dukakis’ appeal is more cerebral, depending mainly on the evidence of his achievements in the Massachusetts Statehouse.

In simplest terms, this primary--and perhaps the rest of the Democratic campaign--boils down to Jackson’s Politics of Passion versus Dukakis’ Politics of Competence.

“We the people can make a difference,” Jackson told the assemblage in St. Frederick’s in typically portentous tones. “We can, we will and we must.”

“I have no interest in being a great communicator,” Dukakis said in characteristically matter-of-fact fashion at a campaign rally in Madison. “After seven years of charisma, maybe a little competence in the White House would be a good thing.”

The distinctions between these two contenders for the Democratic nomination are more than stylistic. For Jackson’s rumbling rhetoric bears with it, however vaguely implied, the promise of broad changes in governmental policies at home and abroad, moving the country leftward from the centrist position many Democrats think is now the safest to advocate politically.

Governor’s Method Milder

Dukakis’ approach to problem-solving--although undeniably liberal in its acceptance of the responsibilities of the federal government--is, like his rhetoric, far milder and moderate, concentrating mainly on incremental reforms and refinements in managing the bureaucracy.

Thus the battle lines have been drawn here between these two Democratic leaders. And on the eve of the vote, polls and pundits agree, the outcome is too close to call.

The two other surviving Democratic candidates, Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. and Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, are competing here too, each with his own stake in the results.

Strategists for Gore, who the polls put in third place, are hoping that by getting 15% or more of the vote here he can at last begin to demonstrate that he can attract support outside his native South. And in the closing hours of the campaign, they said the evidence of their own polls suggested they will be able to accomplish just that.

Gore Attacks Dukakis

Steve Welcher, state director of the Gore campaign, predicted that Gore would get about 20% of the vote--or perhaps even more. And the candidate, contending that the undecided vote “is breaking our way here in Wisconsin,” came out swinging Monday with an attack at Dukakis for his reluctance to criticize Jackson.

Gore, who last week portrayed Jackson’s views as extreme and his background as a preacher unsuited for the presidency, labeled Dukakis’ silence on those issues as ridiculous and “absurdly timid.”

At a rally at a Polish restaurant in Milwaukee on Monday evening, Gore said that “we don’t want a nominee who just pussyfoots around and who is too timid to lay it on the line . . . and we don’t want a nominee who goes to Cuba and embraces (Fidel) Castro and goes to the Middle East and embraces (Yasser) Arafat.”

“I think it’s the opposite of the kind of bold leadership that we need in this country,” Gore said during a day of campaigning in Wisconsin. “Michael Dukakis gives the impression of being scared to death to say a single word other than praising Jesse Jackson for fear his comments will be misinterpreted.”

The attack clearly angered Dukakis, who has generally refrained from criticizing his rivals. When questioned about them on a day that he also toured the state, he interrupted, snapping: “Sen. Gore ought to start campaigning for the presidency.”

Simon Hopes to Beat Gore

As for Simon, whose only primary victory came in his own state of Illinois on March 15, aides say his objective is to finish ahead of Gore and thus justify continuing his candidacy.

But Jackson and Dukakis have dominated the polls and the debate in this contest, which initially appeared to be only a minor milestone in the long journey to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta in July.

That prospect was altered by the Illinois primary and the Michigan caucuses March 26. In both those states, Dukakis, the putative front-runner in the race, faltered and ran behind Jackson, who finished second in Illinois, his home state, and scored a landslide victory in Michigan.

The net result was to raise the stakes for the Wisconsin primary well beyond the 81 pledged delegates who will be awarded on a proportional basis as a result of today’s vote.

“Both these candidates have something to prove,” says Al From, executive director of the Democratic Leadership Council, a Washington-based group of centrist elected officials. “Dukakis has to get working-class votes and Jackson has to show he can get white votes.”

Minuscule Black Population

Although Jackson is operating at an obvious disadvantage here because of the minuscule black population, his advisers believe that the economic environment is relatively favorable to his getting white support.

That is because Wisconsin has had an unusual number of well-publicized labor disputes--the strike at Cudahy, which has dragged on more than a year, another bitter strike at a paper plant in De Pere, near Green Bay, and Chrysler Corp.’s threatened shutdown of its plant at Kenosha.

Jackson put himself in good position to take advantage of these concerns by personally intervening in the major labor disputes in De Pere and Cudahy well before his presidential campaign got under way in earnest, encouraging the embattled union members and helping them get public attention for their grievances.

“Rev. Jackson is no stranger to Wisconsin,” says Carolyn Kazdin, Jackson’s state coordinator. “He has stood with these people over the years and they remember that. When I came there to organize the campaign this state was like 11 months pregnant for Jackson.” Nor is Jackson in any way shy about reminding voters here of his past efforts.

To be sure, Jackson’s chief adversary here, Dukakis, also is in a position to benefit from economic discontent. Wherever he goes he presents himself as “a full-employment Democrat,” an assertion he seeks to buttress by his claim of having wrought “a miracle” of economic recovery in his own state.

But Dukakis well knows he cannot compete with Jackson as an orator, so he seeks to make virtue out of his limited speaking skills by repeatedly asserting, as he did at the Madison rally, that he has no desire to be known as “a great communicator.”

Certainly there seems little danger that will happen to him, as even his most ardent admirers acknowledge. After the Madison rally at a retirement center, Rosanne Freeburg, a supporter who drove to Wisconsin from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she founded an organization called Grandmas for Dukakis, said wistfully: “He did fine. But I wish we could have created some more excitement.”

‘Putting People Back to Work’

But there are other ways to communicate Dukakis’ concern with the well-being of workers besides rhetoric, Dukakis’ Wisconsin coordinator, Tom Forciea, points out. “Jackson communicates his compassion through his speeches,” Forciea says. “We have to do it through Dukakis’ record. And I think we can show that putting people back to work is compassionate.”

And indeed there is evidence that this approach does work. William Lohr, a school maintenance worker and union member who came to the rally in St. Frederick’s undecided about his choice in today’s voting, said after hearing Jackson speak: “Sounds like a lot of generalities.”

The next night he attended a rally in Milwaukee for Dukakis and decided that he favored the governor. “The speeches themselves were quite similar,” he said. “But I was impressed by Dukakis’ experience.” Lohr said he was also influenced by polls, cited by Dukakis’ supporters at the rally, which indicated that he could beat Vice President George Bush in November. “I think he is a more viable candidate than Jackson,” Lohr said.

Backers Cite Poll Strength

Those polls are one of the main arguments for Dukakis’ candidacy offered by his local supporters. At the Dukakis rally Lohr attended, at Serb Hall, a celebrated local gathering place for Milwaukee’s various ethnic communities, former Wisconsin Gov. Tony Earl, a Dukakis backer, told the crowd: “Only Mike Dukakis has shown in poll after poll that he can repudiate the Reagan record by beating George Bush in November.”

Another factor that many think will help Dukakis in today’s vote is that hotly contested elections for mayor of Milwaukee and executive of Milwaukee County are expected to boost the turnout of voters in the Milwaukee metropolitan area, most of them white ethnics, most of whom are expected to favor Dukakis.

Although polls indicate that Jackson is getting more white voters here than in any other state, the figure for him in the latest Milwaukee Journal poll was still only a little better than 30%. Apart from his own much-discussed background as the son of Greek immigrants, Dukakis’ prospects with white ethnics are probably helped by his support from Rep. Gerald D. Kleczka of the 4th District in Milwaukee. Kleczka, who spoke for Dukakis at the Serb Hall rally, is known in the city as “the ethnic congressman.”

But for all the assets his campaign boasts, things have not fallen into place for Dukakis as neatly as his advisers would wish. One symptom of the lack of consensus for his candidacy among the Democratic Establishment was the decision of the relatively liberal Milwaukee Journal, the city’s afternoon paper, to endorse Gore instead of Dukakis. “Dukakis’ greatest strengths are managerial,” the paper said, while describing Gore as “a person of intensity and compassion.”

Modest Gore Surge Seen

The endorsement by the Journal, along with the backing of the city’s morning paper, the more conservative Milwaukee Sentinel, may have contributed to what Gore’s own advisers and other politicians feel is at least a modest last-minute surge by Gore.

As for Simon, he has tried to take advantage of his personal and philosophical ties to the state--his father was raised here near Green Bay and Simon’s views are roughly congruent with the progressive tradition for which Wisconsin Democratic politics have long been known.

Staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.

THE WISCONSIN PRIMARY

THE STATE

Population: 4,785,000 (1986 est.)

Racial/ethnic makeup: 95% white, 3% black, 1% Latino, 1% Indian.

Economy: Manufacturing (principally machinery, food products, wood and paper); agriculture (dairy and feed grains). Unemployment rate (Jan. ‘88), 7.0%.

Major cities: Milwaukee, 630,000; Madison (capital), 170,000.

THE PRIMARY

Eighty-one Democratic and 47 Republican delegates are at stake today in what is the most open primary in the country. There is no prior registration--any citizen over 18 may vote--and voters needn’t decide which party’s primary to vote in until they are inside the voting booth. For the Democrats, 53 delegates will be allocated to presidential candidates in proportion to the vote in each congressional district; any candidate receiving 15% or more of the vote in a district will get at least one delegate. The remaining delegates, representing the state at large, will be awarded proportionally to candidates receiving 15% or more of the statewide popular vote. In the GOP primary, the winner in each congressional district gets all of that district’s delegates, and the statewide winner gets all 20 of the at-large delegates.